xxix DR. BENJAMIN RUSH 371 



had further advised the sending of a chemical apparatus ; 

 the Proprietor had therefore obtained such an apparatus 

 as Fothergill thought necessary, as a gift to the new 

 institution. 



A story is told of young Rush, that he was" present, 

 some years before the war, at a debating society in 

 London, when some one derided the Americans as having 

 guns but no cannon-balls to put into them. This brought 

 Rush to his feet, declaring that if they had not balls, they 

 would load their guns with the skulls of their ancestors, 

 who had crossed the ocean to vindicate their independence. 

 How Rush fulfilled in after years the high anticipations 

 of Fothergill and his other friends is well known. Of 

 studious and scholarly habits, independent mind and 

 candid nature, a man of constant industry and research 

 and of wide interests, Dr. Rush became one of the greatest 

 of American physicians. His works on yellow fever, on 

 climatic disorders, and on the treatment of the insane 

 were important contributions to the progress of medicine ; 

 Lettsom called him the Sydenham of America. It is 

 stated, indeed, that the lancet and calomel were his stand- 

 bys ; he called the latter " Samson," and his critics 

 said in derision that it was " because it had slain its 

 thousands." But his treatment of the successive epi- 

 demics of yellow fever in Philadelphia was eminently 

 successful, and his labours during these times of crisis 

 were nothing less than heroic. He helped, too, to lead 

 his country into political freedom, and was one of the 

 signatories to the Declaration of Independence. The 

 influence of Quaker ancestry showed itself in his labours 

 for the freeing of the negroes, for the abolition of the 

 death penalty, for the Bible Society and for the restriction 

 of the use of alcohol and tobacco. He wrote, too, against 

 judicial oaths, and he condemned war ; he would have a 

 government office established for preserving perpetual 

 peace, which he set along with liberty as a fruit of republi- 

 can principle. Although then without means, he declined 

 all reward for his medical services as physician general 

 to the army in the War of Liberation, and he distributed 



